Sammy Yatim was the kid with the knife on a streetcar. James Forcillo is the cop who shot at him nine times, hitting him with eight bullets.

After observing that the response by police seemed excessive, I had notes from a couple of retired cops who said they could have and would have disarmed young Sammy with a nightstick.

I also had notes from cops who sneered at me for suggesting such a thing might be possible.

Meet Momcilo Soso.

Call him Mo. He lives in North York. He is a cheerful guy who comes from a country where men get military training. Mo, who knows a thing or two about self-defence, works as a handyman.

Last fall his nephew was coming from Montenegro to visit. Mo didn’t have room to put him up, but he had been working on a house not far away, and the lady next door to where he was working had a basement apartment that would soon be free.

Mo thought he’d rent it, in order to give his nephew some space and some privacy. They made a deal and, just before he took possession of the apartment, Mo called and asked if he could come by to fix a few things up. The landlady said yes, and she gave him a key.

Mo showed up a day after the tenant was to have moved out. He brought his toolbox and a ladder with him. He knocked on the door, and then put the key in the lock. Remember, no one was supposed to be there. The tenant was supposed to be gone.

Mo said he heard a man’s voice: “Truck off. Get the truck out of here, I’m trying to sleep.” Truck is a rhyming word. This is a family paper.

Mo replied, “I’m the new tenant. I need to fix some things.” The tenant’s reply: “Get the hell out.”

Mo tapped on the landlady’s door to find out what was going on. She was as surprised as he was to learn the tenant had not moved.

Mo shrugged; no big deal, he could wait a few more days. He stepped outside to make a call. While he was doing so, the landlady shut off the water to the apartment below.

And that’s when the tenant rushed up the stairs. Mo said, “He was about 30 years old, and in his underwear. He and the landlady were talking. I could see he was making a fist. He was moving slowly, trying to intimidate, like roosters do. I thought she was going to get creamed.”

Mo said he shooed her out of harm’s way, and the tenant swing at Mo and missed, and Mo struck back, and they grappled. Mo told the landlady to call 911.

The tenant broke away and ran downstairs; when he came back up, he was holding a kitchen knife.

Yikes.

Mo says he grabbed the crowbar from his toolkit as the tenant came at him with the knife. Mo said, “Boom, I hit him on the side with 75 per cent of my power.”

There was some more grappling, and another blow with the crowbar; eventually, the tenant ran back downstairs and Mo, bravely or unwisely, followed. He found the tenant sitting in a chair, crying.

What happened next is why it has taken me so long to write this story. The cops showed up — six cars, and an ambulance — and they took a look at the tenant, and judged that Mo was the aggressor, and they charged him with assault with a dangerous weapon, and forcible confinement. Huh?

It took several months for the case to make its way through court; the charges were recently, and sensibly, dismissed. And here’s the question I’ve been asking myself ever since: how does a crowbar differ from a nightstick when carried in capable hands?